Join in as Belsasar talks about his journey starting and growing his own business in a competitive environment that required them to find and utilize their biggest advantage - their customers and the customers of their competitors.

Stories:

How his family history shaped his aversion to ‘serial entrepreneurship” and led other leaders to dub him one of the “hardest working people I’ve ever met”

Why they try to learn from their competitors in the space ‘by proxy’ and how they get in front of customers who are using other platforms

Why listening to customers who had been brutally honest in the past led to a stronger product launch

A Mic Drop Moment that proved that sometimes it’s okay to push hard on customers

Customer Experience:

How they ensure they’re meeting the needs of their customers through experimentation

Why they don’t like to go more than a month without getting a product in front of their customers value getting products and updates in front of their customers early and often

How understanding your customers competitors sets you ahead

Using customer feedback to amplify your success

How Agile methodologies help improve customer experience

Tips, Tools & Resources:

Net Promoter Score: How to use it to gather customer feedback and what to do with the data collected

Listen in as Shawn Boyer talks about why it was important for his company to become a Best Place to Work and how it allowed them to beat their competitors and bring in high returns for their investors. We dive deep into the relationship between this CEO and his Chief People Officer to better understand how that partnership led to such high levels of success.

Join us as we sound off about:

Stories:

Why Shawn made culture such a high priority and how it led to them having over 65 million profiles on their site and over 200,000 companies using their services

The story of the day Snagajob found out they were the #1 Best Place to Work in the country in the small and medium category.

Why being on the Best Place to Work list mattered to Shawn and when he set that goal for the company

What being on the list does to employees and how it’s a double edged sword for leaders

What he does when employees want something he can’t give them

The role storytelling and testimonials played in keeping employees and leaders connected to the mission of the company

How he took his vision for creating a great culture and turned it into a reality

The impact his Chief of People had on their ability to become a Best Place to Work and why he’s glad he hired a CPO as early as he did

Tips, Tools & Resources:

Advice to the CEO: Tips and guidance for the CEO of a small company who wants to be known for having a great culture

4 Characteristics of a good Chief People Officer: Seriously, don’t miss out on this part of the podcast

Engagement Surveys and Pulse Checks: How they gathered employee feedback at Snagajob, their strategy and process for capturing data and doing something with it including the role of the Culture Team on collecting cross departmental feedback

Organizational Alignment: How they cascaded their Mission Statement with values, vision, a 3 year plan, a 1 year plan and goals to make sure there was a strong correlation between the heart of the business and the quantitative data and measures. Why this allowed their employees to connect with the mission of the company in an emotional way

Keeping HR From Being Marginalized: How he made sure the CPO was seen and treated as an important asset to by his senior leadership team and the rest of his company

Don’t miss the amazing story of a leader who has overcome a lot on his journey to success - the foster system, being the underdog at boot camp, becoming a Navy SEAL, 29 broken bones including a neck and being told he’d never walk again. His story is truly inspirational and is packed with solid leadership advice that helped one team increase sales 40%.

Today John sounds off about the following stories:

Why his desire for family drove him to become a Navy SEAL

Three crazy boot camp stories including why he and his bunkmates had to be “Quiet Ninjas”

How he made sure he had enough mental and physical strength to achieve his goal of being a SEAL

How and why he hustled to start his physical training company which has expanded to six cities and has had up to 210 people in a single class

Why the Discovery Channel is creating a documentary about his work

How he made it through a neck injury that caused the doctors to say he’d never live through the night or walk again

Don’t miss Ryan Hagan talk about what he learned leading teams at an ‘idyllic’ company that was growing quickly, had some of the top customer engagement, employee engagement and manager effectiveness scores in the country and was a nationally recognized Best Place to Work. More importantly, hear about how he applied those philosophies to a struggling software company to completely transform the way they do business.

Today we sound off about:

Stories:

Why Ryan took on the challenge of turning around a struggling software company as a way to prove that his methodologies are sound

When and why he became focused on being a great leader

How the book “Drive” by Daniel Pink changed the way he leads

Tips, Tools & Resources:

Lack of discipline: How it gets companies into trouble

Agile Philosophies & Daily Standups: How they helped strengthen the company

Performance Review Process: Why they blew theirs up

Employee Engagement Surveys: Why they matter and how he uses them

Intentional Process Design: How he transformed the product development process, the sales process and the culture

Net Promoter Scores: What it is, why and how they use it

Strengths Profile and DISC: Two tools that help him build strong relationships with the members of his team

One on One’s: Why you need to do them weekly even though you don’t agree

(UB017) Can You Fake EQ By Slowing Down IQ?Is Engagement Art or Science?Has the transition to Holacracy been smooth for Zappos? This episode is a must listen mashup. Featuring Jamie Naughton, Chief of Staff @ Zappos